Former Bachelorette Contestant Peter Kraus Opened Up About His Eating Disorder

Fitness helped him recover.

Before he competed on the Bachelorette, contestant Peter Kraus said he battled an eating disorder.

In an Instagram post in honor of #WorkoutWednesday, Peter opened up about his past with disordered eating, and how learning more about fitness was a crucial part of his recovery. In the post, Peter said his eating disorder became apparent at age 20, when he was working as a model.

"At the age of 20 I had developed an eating disorder while blindly attempting to keep up with the level of fitness of my fellow models and competitors," he said, "For two years I struggled in silence, always trying but never knowing how to compete with my counterparts. In the winter of 2007 I hit rock bottom and decided that it was finally time to take charge of my health and fitness and learn how to do things the right way."

Peter said he became educated about nutrition and fitness, which helped lead him into recovery.

"I enrolled myself in the dietetics program at MATC and graduated with honors, my first PT job, and my first @ironmantri under my belt two years later," he wrote. "So on this #WorkoutWednesday I say thank you to a career that taught me so much, that while now retired, is still fun to go back to from time to time to do things the RIGHT way. If it weren’t for hitting “rock bottom” I never would have had this amazing hill of life to climb back up."

Peter is addressing an important issue. While stereotypes about eating disorders might lead people to believe only thin, white girls have them, the truth is that eating disorders span gender, race, size and socio-economic status. And with so much stigma around eating disorders already, further stigmatizing the men who struggle with them.

"There is no advantage to creating this gendered distinction among eating disorders," Seamus Kirst, who survived an eating disorder, previously wrote for Teen Vogue. "All it does is reinforce the negative stereotypes that trivialize deadly mental health disorders. All it does is further prevent people from seeking help."